These beads are made with a particularly beautiful variety of Effetre Coral called 'Dusty Rose' from quite a few years ago. It seems like every time Effetre makes Coral, it comes out a different colour! I have versions that are red, versions that are pink, and versions that are orange. I'll be sad when this batch is gone and I have to find another Coral to love.

Even though I've used this ridiculously rare and frequently very expensive colour of Coral for this test, it is reasonable to expect that other, newer and cheaper varieties of Coral will have similar behaviour with other colours.

In the bead on the left, you can see how dark and brown the Coral has turned with the addition of silver. In the bead on the right, you can see that the silver has turned blue on top of the Coral, and the brown fuming has disappeared. It also does this with Reichenbach Mystic Coral.

Coral makes silver glass pop. I got awesome colour in the bead on the right, where this test usually yields a pretty unexciting result.

Coral's reactions are pretty similar to Ivory's reactions with other colours. None of the reactions you see here are very exciting, and the highlights are:

A dark line forms between Coral and Copper Green. When the Copper Green is on top, the Coral pools in strange, blushing crevices around the Copper Green.

CiM Lapis is hands-down the best blue-purple opaque colour I've yet used. It is interestingly reactive, vibrant, and relatively inexpensive (compared to other purples and indigos) to boot.

On the surface of Lapis, silver spreads out and balls up in tiny little bits, mostly. What doesn't break up turns an interesting turquoise colour. If you reduce and encase the silver, the mottled bluish, turquoisey green effect can cover the whole bead surface under the clear. This effect is also faintly shiny, like mother of pearl.

Because Lapis is reactive with silver, it rises up in light halos around silver glass. You can see the light halos around all of the fritty bits in this picture. You can see also that all of my TerraNova2 frit turned purple, which is stage one of striking for it. Had I cooled and reheated the bead a few more times I would have gotten more interesting colours. To me, this means that Lapis is potentially a pretty decent base colour for striking silver glass colours.

I do this silver glass test with every colour just to see the differences in how the frit behaves when I run the test the same way each time. Some colours seem to magically accelerate the striking of silver glass while others seem to inhibit it. Lapis seems like a good one, but not a great one.

Here, you can see that just like with silver glass, Lapis rises up in halos around Tuxedo, and Lapis separates very dramatically when used on top of Tuxedo.

Copper Green separates on top of Lapis, with the lighter more turquoise bits in the middle of dots and stringer lines and the outside lines looking sort of dark and dingy. On top of Copper Green, Lapis separates so that it has a dark line in the middle of stringer lines and dark pinpoints in the middle of dots.

When Opal Yellow is used on top of Lapis, the Lapis at the edges of the dots and stringer lines fades and looks a bit mottled. Lapis separates very slightly on top of Opal Yellow.

Ivory separates and curdles on top of Lapis. Lapis separates on top of Ivory.

Like with Opal Yellow, Peace causes a light Lapis outer line to form around its edges. When Lapis is used on top of Peace, it bleeds and the Peace takes on a lavender appearance.

Glass Colour Properties

About the Reaction Index

This index of reactions, or 'neat effects', is a work in process, and organizes the reactions I have observed in my test beads. I do not claim to have 'invented' any of these reactions, nor do I consider myself any kind of authority on glass reactions. In many cases, I have made up names that suit me to describe the reactions, and I'll continue to do that unless I happen to learn what it is supposed to be called.

I am a student of glass, and am taking a fairly scientific approach to my relationship with it. The results of that experimentation are here as a reference for anyone who is interested.